Schwarzenegger is back, Hollywood hopes he’s still a star

Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed three films already.

LOS ANGELES:

As he famously droned on-screen in his signature Terminator movies, actor Arnold Schwarzenegger is back.

A year after leaving the California governor’s office and becoming tabloid fodder for fathering a boy with his family’s housekeeper and splitting with his wife, Maria Shriver, the 65-year old former bodybuilder will star in no less than three Hollywood movies over the next 12 months.

None are likely to win Schwarzenegger an Oscar. Indeed, the movies, and Schwarzenegger’s own fee, are low-budget compared with his global blockbusters of yore. But studio executives are betting that overseas fans especially will once again respond to a personality whose 24 films generated worldwide ticket sales of $3.9 billion, according to boxoffice.com.

“He is still a worldwide star who resonates with action audiences around the world,” said Rob Friedman, the co-chairman of the Lionsgate motion picture group, which is scheduled to release his next two films. The Last Stand will open on January 18, and The Tomb in September.

Ten, the third film, is scheduled for release in January 2014 by Open Road Films, a joint venture of the AMC and Regal Theater chains.

“When you have left the movie business for seven years, it’s kind of a scary thing to come back because you don’t know if you’re accepted or not,” Schwarzenegger said at a Saturday press event for The Last Stand.

“There could be a whole new generation of action stars that come up in the meantime.”

The actor said he was “very pleasantly surprised” by what he called a “great reaction” to his cameo in the 2010 action film The Expendables, which featured fellow action stars Sylvester Stallone and Jason Statham. The film grossed $103.1 million in US ticket sales and $274.5 million worldwide.

Since then, Schwarzenegger appeared in a second Expendables and says he will join a fifth installment of the Terminator if it is made.

Comcast’s Universal Pictures wants to “do a bunch” of new films based on the 30-year-old Conan The Barbarian movie, said Schwarzenegger, in which he would reprise his role as a barbarian; he also wants to do a sequel to the 1988 comedy Twins.

Schwarzenegger no longer commands the $25 million paychecks he cashed in his heyday and will get between $8 and $10 million for each of his next three films, according to two people with knowledge of his salary but who were not authorised to speak publicly about it. He also gets a percentage of the profits, according to one of the people.

What audiences will see is an aging star who isn’t afraid of showing his drooping muscles and widening paunch, or of making fun of being past his prime. In the The Last Stand, a less than rock hard Schwarzenegger plays a retired Los Angeles policeman who becomes the sheriff of a small border town and is then called on to stop a violent drug lord from crossing.

In Ten he plays an aging drug agent, and in The Tomb an older prison inmate. 

Published in The Express Tribune, January 8^th, 2013.

Like Life & Style on Facebook for the latest in fashion, gossip and entertainment.